Today, access to the Internet is available to a wide audience through the public switched telephone network (PSTN). Typically, in this environment, a user accesses the Internet though a full-duplex dial-up connection through a PSTN modem, which may offer data rates as high as 56 thousand bits per second (56 kbps) over the local-loop plant.
However, in order to increase data rates (and therefore improve response time), other data services are either being offered to the public, or are being planned, such as data communications using full-duplex cable television (CATV) modems, which offer a significantly higher data rate over the CATV plant than the above-mentioned PSTN-based modem. In addition, hybrid networks, where the amount of bandwidth available in one direction of the connection is significantly higher than on the reverse direction, are being -planned. In a hybrid network, the user accesses the Internet by transmitting data via a PSTN-based modem and receiving data via the CATV-based modem. This hybrid network is based upon a model where in the upstream direction, i.e., to the Internet, the amount of data to be transmitted is small--hence a lower data rate is permissible--whereas in the downstream direction, i.e., from the Internet, the amount of data to be received is large--hence a higher data rate is desirable.
Irrespective of the data communications architecture, when accessing the Internet an Internet Protocol (IP) address is associated with the endpoint receiving the data. For example, in the above mentioned hybrid architecture, downstream IP packets are transmitted to an IP address associated with the CATV equipment that provides the data to the end user. Consequently, the user experiences an interruption in service when a fault occurs in the CATV plant.